With dormitory space scarce, Syracuse University places students in hotels, off-campus apartments

View full sizeEllen M. Blalock / The Post-StandardRobert Axelrod, an acting major at Syracuse University, is one of the students living in the Parkview Hotel. Most of Axelrod’s classes are near´by at Syracuse Stage. His room for two has a small kitchen with a refrigerator and microwave.

Syracuse University student Kelly Perkins is spending his sophomore year on the fourth floor of the Sheraton Hotel.

“It’s awesome,” said Perkins, a computer engineering major from Santa Monica, Calif. “Most people are jealous. We have bigger beds, air-conditioning, private bathrooms.

“It’s the Sheraton, right?”

As a boom in enrollment at SU outpaces housing, the university this year put up 138 students in two hotels and 188 more in new private apartment complexes nearby.

Since 2005, undergraduate enrollment has increased by 1,750 students and SU has added about 500 new beds. Some of the gap has been filled by private housing developments and increased rental houses, but last year’s biggest freshmen class in at least 60 years forced SU to convert many dormitory lounges into rooms. While this year’s freshman class had about 60 fewer students, the university decided to free up lounges and ease pressure on the dorms by putting students into off-campus housing — including hotels.

SU students are required to live in university housing during their first two years.

The university has taken over the fourth floor of the Sheraton, just across Waverly Avenue from the main campus; and the first three floors of the boutique Parkview Hotel on Genesee Street, about three-quarters of a mile from campus but right across the street from Syracuse Stage, where theater classes are held.

SU bought the Sheraton in 2000 and still owns it. The Parkview is owned by developer Norm Swanson, who also is planning to build an apartment complex a few blocks from campus.

Many students last spring jumped at the chance to spend a year in a nice hotel. Sophomore Robert Axelrod, an acting major, signed up quickly to live in the Parkview on because it’s so close to his classes at Syracuse Stage.

He shares a large corner room on the third floor with a roommate.

“It’s very much like a typical New York City studio apartment with a kitchen, a bathroom and a bedroom,” Axelrod said. “A lot of people probably think I’m missing out on the whole college experience of being in a dorm. I’ve gone through that. I couldn’t be happier.”

The rooms haven’t been modified except for the addition of a second desk and dresser. They’re large, with flat-screen TVs mounted on the wall.

Students at the Sheraton are on the university meal plan, and eat at campus dining halls. Parkview students can sign up for a meal plan, but many found it so inconvenient they just dropped it and instead eat at local restaurants.

Some Parkview students are unhappy with their arrangements. First-year student Douglas Lin, who comes from China, said the Parkview is occupied predominately by Chinese students who must improve their English skills through SU’s University College before they can take regular classes. Lin questioned why they were clustered together so far from the main campus.

“When we’re together, we speak Chinese together,” Lin said. “If they put us in a school dorm maybe we could have a lot of English-speaking students and maybe we could get more practice with our English.”

Lin said he and other students had bought on-campus meal plans, but dropped them once they realized how far the hotel was from the dining halls.

SU spokeswoman Sara Miller said the international students were clustered there for several reasons, including the fact that the hotel remains open during the month-long winter break, and because not being required to pay for the campus meal plan gives them more options for dining.

Resident assistants live in each hotel, just as they do in dormitories. The RAs have tried to make hotel hallways look like dorm hallways, even down to crafty name tags affixed to each door. At the Sheraton, the doors are adorned with aluminum foil cut to resemble a large Hershey’s kiss, with each roommate’s name written on the swirling ribbon. On one floor of the Parkview, the names are written on iconic comedy and tragedy masks.

At the Parkview, a basement conference room has been turned into a student lounge. A plastic in/out basket just outside the elevator at the Parkview contains handouts labeled as “Resource Brochures.” A bulletin board at the Sheraton has posters for the Anime Club and Campus Bible Fellowship.

Even so, the Sheraton “feels more like a hotel than a dorm,” said sophomore Alex Ranalli, who lives there.

Hotel living comes with perks on-campus students don’t get. Sheraton students can use the pool and workout rooms. Bathrooms are cleaned once a week. And there’s even room service — at the same price other guests pay.

Some rules are more restrictive, though, and both hotels have their own subsections in SU’s housing code. At the Parkview, students must abide by the hotel’s quiet hours of 11:30 p.m. to 7 a.m., and must “conduct themselves in a quiet and orderly manner while accessing all common areas.”

Similarly, SU’s rules state, the Sheraton has “a noise control policy of zero tolerance,” and students can be kicked out after two noise complaints.

Students in both hotels also have to check out earlier than those in dorm rooms: Parkview students must be out no later than 24 hours after their last exam in May, and the Sheraton students have to move out by May 10. And the Sheraton has just one washer and dryer for the entire hotel; students sometimes haul their laundry to nearby Ernie Davis Hall.